For many years, it has been common to place a printed circuit board on the opposite side of the disk base from the disks and voice coil motor in a hard disk drive. The electrical interface between the sliders and the printed circuit board frequently includes a main flex circuit that uses a preamplifier integrated circuit that buffers the write differential signal from the printed circuit board and the read differential signal going to the printed circuit board. The main flex circuit is electrically coupled through a flex ribbon to a flex circuit interface that goes through a connector site to electrically couple to the printed circuit board.
As the hard disk drives grow in memory capacity, there is a need particularly for the differential signal paths to be able to operate at higher frequencies. This invention addresses this need.